


The Man In The Wind And The West Moon

by Tammany



Series: The Sussex Downs [18]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Death, Eternity, Gen, Immortality, Mortality, Time - Freeform, Uncertainty, life after death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 14:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20707388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This follows from the theme set up in the last. It's a character study, of sorts, and an examination of the world that Gaiman and Pratchett seem to have set up, in which regardless of scripture, none of the main players except perhaps God seem very sure of how it all *WORKS* in the sense of what it's about and who survives and how it matters. There's no sign that, for example, any of the main Abrahamic theories of the afterlife are anything any of Team Heaven or Team Hell seem any more sure of than are human beings. Which is to say, while Crowley and Aziraphale both chat about things like Hell getting all the amusing artists, there's really very little sign that either of them has WITNESSED it. They seem to be taking it on faith. Beyond that, it's just Her Ineffability playing poker in the dark and smiling too much. Their world is not a world that proves faith to be accurate.Beyond that, it's an attempt to try to talk about what it would be like for "immortals" and mere mortals to live side by side, with the same depth of passion and personhood, and the same fears of loss--and radically different time scales. There's more to be said. But it will have to wait.





	The Man In The Wind And The West Moon

Crowley smelled it first—the odor of sanctity. At first he thought it was just a side-effect of their contentment. Six thousand years slow burn, resulting in this insane, blissful little corner of reality, here on the Sussex Downs. Life with his Angel, and every sign that Herself had in some sense created a new and powerful position for the two of them together—powerful enough to risk facing down Heaven, and perhaps even Hell. The good stuff. That seemed worthy of the glorious, if haunting, hard to pin down perfume that hinted of clean mint and warm vanilla and musky, exotic saffron and bright and shining citrus and sentimental rose and lily of the valley, and cinnamon and cloves, and of all things good and blessed, and of the holy evil of the apple itself in Eden. He would come in from the pool or the beach or the cliffs or from a glorious flight over the English Channel (just a hop and a skip to Wight and Jersey and Geurnsey…) and he’d smell it—along with whatever culinary experiment Aziraphale was indulging in, for better or worse, and the scent of tea, and the scent of angel and demon cohabiting, and heather and wild sage and thyme, and bracken from the hillsides, and…

It would be there, a glorious smell. He loved it, even if it made his demon sinuses flood and set him sneezing and wheezing and begging for either an antihistamine or a miracle, whichever was quickest.

Holiness. Sanctity. Or, as he put it just to needle the angel, “the stink of dead saints and living con artists.” But it was there, beautiful and clean, impossible to miss.

He didn’t ask. He hadn’t lived with angels in a long, long time, and when he had, things like the odor of sanctity were the sort of ordinary you never got around to naming. There may be a word for the smell of rain on dry earth: there are plenty of times and places where that scent is so remarkable it needs a word of its own. But there’s no word for “the smell of your house on a normal day when nothing unusual is going on and your mom is not cooking your favorite dinner.” For all Crowley knew, the scent was only to be expected. And, yet, he began to snoop. Just a bit. The scent led him here, and there. He found little, glimmering piles of seeds and spores that appeared to have been blessed. A few days later they were gone. He found a rock—a single wave-rounded flint, ground to an egg shape, dark as black coffee, with a white vein of inclusion that looked like ouroboros biting his tail—a sigil of the eternal. It felt warm from a foot away, begging him to convert to his serpent form and coil around it and bask. A week later he couldn’t find it again. A week after that he was drawn to a corner of the neighboring Holmes compound, where it was set at the boundary line, along with an ancient knapped flint blade and a stone that looked like a shield.

Over time he picked out the pattern.

“You’re placing wards on them, Angel. On us, too. But—on them.”

“They’re human,” Aziraphale said in the stubborn, miserable voice he’d once used to explain giving away his flaming sword. “It’s dangerous out there. And they don’t have any of the tools to hold off Heaven or Hell.”

“You’ve warded off a hell of a lot more than that.” He shook his head. “Warded against HIV? Ebola? Earthquake? Flood? Falling airplanes? I mean—what’s that about, eh? They’re not immortal. Not like all the wards in the world are going to protect them from being human.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” The tone was scathing—one of Angel’s frustrated, petty bouts of rage and hurt feelings.

“Come on, Angel…it’s not like I don’t care. But they’re…ephemeral. At best.”

The angel’s blue-and-moss eyes narrowed, and he pouted and scowled. “All the more reason to buy them every second of life I can, then,” he said with a huff, and stomped away.

Crowley followed, increasingly aware that tears were hidden behind that anger and frustration. “Hey, don’t look at me. I was on star detail, not biochemistry. I didn’t make the poor bastards transitory. It’s their nature. Her will. The Ineffable Plan.”

“With eternity to work in, what’s to say that has to remain true?” There it was again—that Eden-old growl of resistance. How Angel had avoided the Fall was an abiding mystery to Crowley. It’s not like the dandelion-headed Principality, the Guardian of the Eastern Gate, the fluffy, cherubic spun-sugar darling had ever been properly circumspect about his protective feelings toward the humans. Even when they were horrible. He was like a fretful mother with a doomed child: forgiving of every sin, because the time he would have with humans was by definition finite. Born a day, cherished a lifetime—then gone. Three score and ten years, by the Bible’s estimate.

He found the angel in the kitchen, brooding over a great pasta pot of water. It stirred, restless, in spite of the angel standing a good foot away and the hob being quite cold.

“Stand back,” Angel snapped at Crowley. “It’s not…not Holy Water. But…”

“Yeah. I remember. Whoever steps in it first is cured of any disease, right? Let me guess: you’ve been leaving puddles of the stuff out on the patio next door. AmIright?”

“Well, it’s more effective than just begging them to be sure they keep their shots up to date,” Aziraphale grumbled. “Or to take their vitamins.”

“Angel—are you warding us like this, too?”

Aziraphale shrugged, face stark with worry and resentment. “And if I am? I’m a guardian. It’s in my nature, Crowley. Don’t fash yourself about it. It’s part of the job description: Principality, Guardian of Eden. Go on—go out and work up some useful, preventive mischiefs. So that any of your lot who come by get turned into snails for the gulls and the tiggywinkles to eat. Mischiefs are your nature.”

Which made enough sense, and was amusing. And Crowley needed time to think about what Angel was up to—because it was pure Angel, and also one hundred percent crazy in ways he could not recall Angel ever demonstrating. As a rule the angel bit his lower lip and set his jaw and watched “Her Ineffable Plan” unfold in bloody, reeking horror on Her Mortal Children. He hated it—but he had not lifted a finger over the Flood. Or the Crucifixion. Or the Inquisition. Or the Black Plague. Oh, he’d do what he thought he could. But on the whole he witnessed, and no more.

“You ought to know—Angel’s out to take care of your lot,” he told Mycroft one afternoon, as they shared a bottle of a very good Riesling and a pack of cigarettes in the golden summer sun. “He seems to have taken you under his wing. Rather literally.”

“Is that a problem?” Mycroft asked, after some thought. “He’s not likely to get too paternalistic, is he? Lock us in our bedrooms if we fail to respect curfew?”

“No. I don’t think so. Probably not. Not quite sure yet.”

“Such conviction,” Mycroft drawled, voice dry as a career in government could train into him. “Always good to hear an analyst stand behind his conclusions.”

Crowley, who found Mycroft’s tart sarcasm a joy and a comfort, snorted. “Guilt-guilty-guilty. But I’m a demon. And he’s an angel. And as often as not I can’t figure him out to safe my life. He’s on about it all right now. ‘It’s a big bad dangerous world out there, Crowley, and someone must look after them.’ But—I don’t know. I haven’t ever seen him behave like this.”

Mycroft pondered. “Has he ever been so close to humans? Particular humans?”

“Sometimes. When it was an assignment,” Crowley said, rolling the idea over in his mind. “He’s joined social clubs on occasion.”

“Oh, my word. Social clubs. The devil’s answer to human need for contact. All the forms and none of the substance. ‘Good seeing you here, old boy. Have a whiskey on me. What about a hand of gin rummy later? No. Another time, old chap.’ A handshake, a shared cigar, and that’s your social life tied up in a bow with no messy bits hanging out.” He snorted. “I should know. I got by on that for decades. It’s different when you actually let people in.” He glanced at Crowley, and then said, softly, “The real thing—caring and loving and so on—that’s quite different, and a lot more frightening. I used to tell Sherlock, ‘All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage.’ It remains true, Mr. Crowley. We are human, and we live with human finality. We shall die, and be lost to time.”

It rolled over Crowley like a tsunami of cold glacial melt water. Drowning. Freezing. Horrible.

He and his angel had lived six thousand years in the world—but not of it. With the humans—but not truly among them.

He could barely endure the thought of all the ways even an angel and a demon could be destroyed in infinite time. Someday, somehow, it was almost certain he would lose his angel, or his angel would lose him. These mortal flickers passing before him had decades, not millennia. They were there—and gone.

Mycroft met his eyes. “Is there life after death?” he asked, with a grim control that whispered of the authority of judgement.

Crowley remembered the delivery man who’d picked up the regalia of the Horsemen. He’d asked that. “Do you believe in life after death?” What had Aziraphale said? “I suppose I must do.”

He’d said it with the wary uncertainty of someone who’d raised dead pigeons into Lazarus life—but never yet met Jesus in the halls of Heaven. Who’d seen Adam-the-Antichrist refuse the End Times—but who still knew She was waiting with her Ineffable Plan that killed, and killed, and killed again, with no clear proof that the dead actually would cross Jordan and enter into Her Many Mansions and embrace those gone before.

“I don’t know,” he said to the human—the lordly, august human who stood facing down a demon of Hell for an answer eternal. “I suppose there can be. I haven’t seen anything to prove it’s over forever. But beyond the occasional Celestial and the odd pigeon or two Aziraphale’s raised after accidentally smothering them up his sleeve, well…” He considered, and then said, “I can tell you one thing. The grave was empty. And—it’s amazingly hard to kill immortal spirits. We lose our bodies easily enough. But there’s more that remains. And even if that’s not true—there’s this odd, fractal ripple pattern that marks out the existence of everything She Created. The Universe Remembers. It’s built on the shoulders of the dead, and if the dead were truly gone…” He scowled. “Fuck. I don’t know. Look, damn it, ask Angel. Or—no. Please don’t. Like as not that’s what’s got him spinning too. But it’s not impossible, yeah? Angel died. And Angel came back. And there’s nothing in the universe to stop the ripple from spreading out, from the moment of birth until the end of time.”

Mycroft studied him, and blinked, an old, wise tortoise. At last he sighed, and sank, shoulders drooping just a touch. “And yet—all lives end. All hearts are broken.”

“Hesh,” Crowley snapped. “SHE may hear you!”

Mycroft laughed, then—ironic, wry, weary. “I suspect it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before.”

“Yeah—well. Don’t test the Lord thy God. She can be a right brute if you give her ideas.” Crowley drained the last of his wine, ground out the stub of his cigarette under his heel, then miracle his breath fresh, his clothes smoke-free, and the cigarette butt into some inter-dimensional trash bin. “I’m off. Just know you’ve got yourself a guardian angel, with all the pros and cons that go with.”

He didn’t go straight home. He walked the shore, letting the wind toss his hair. He scowled through his sunglasses. He threw chunks of flint at the circling gulls, which swore at him in fluent Gull and tried to poop on his black jacket. He magicked them off with a demonic ward—a minor variant of one of the hundreds—thousands—millions he’d stealthily attached to Angel over the centuries.

A ward that shrieked to Heaven and to Hell and to all in between, “Avert! Avert! Avert! He is mine! He is LOVED! Hands off!”

When he got home he slithered silent through the house until he found the angel, quiet in his library, cocoa gone cold. He was listening to classical music. Dvorak? Yeah—New World Symphony. He was not crying. He might as well have been. Only after long minutes passed did he open his eyes and acknowledge the demon in the doorway.

Crowley cleared his throat. “How do they bear it?” he gritted out. “Seventy years, give or take. A century if they’re crazy lucky. And then it’s gone, like those damned visions in Tempest—and screw Will of Avon for a damned gloom-seller anyway. How do they bear it? We have eternity—and the constant loss is still killing me.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “I don’t know. It is—terrifying. The only thing more terrifying than eternal life is eternal death. Gone. Extinguished. Extinct.”

They shivered, both overwhelmed by Her Own Mystery.

“I like to believe what is written is true,” Aziraphale said.

“What is written?”

“What the preachers preach. And the poets scrawl. And the scientists hint at when they get entirely too quantum. It’s never lost. It never goes. It’s all—somehow it’s all real, and all there, and all the options remain, and all the patterns play out. And…” He cleared his throat and wiped his eye with his neat and accurate handkerchief. Then he steadied himself. “And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the west moon; when their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, they shall have stars at elbow and foot; though they go mad, they shall be sane, though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; though lovers be lost, love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.”

Crowley had stood outside churches and heard priests and ministers thunder out the scripture, thump the Bible, pound on the podium, cry out their authority. None, he thought, had ever matched Angel begging the universe itself for human poetry to be the soul and spirit of the ineffable plan. She Herself should bow her face in shame if she denied her Cherub this.

“I love you, Angel,” he whispered. “Even if…even if it’s not true. I love you.”

And his Angel, who hid in the holy shell of a bookstore and peeked out with timid fear of what Time had ground to dust, growled, “Oh, Crowley!” and held him close, sheltered in pure white wings.

Nota Bene: Aziraphale's quote is from Dylan Thomas' "And death shall have no dominion." Which seems evident, but my conscience began to bug me to cite him. So. Citation accomplished. 


End file.
